Generally, businesses and large organizations consume large amounts of paper and other printer resources through the use of printers, printing presses, and other printing equipment. The consumption of these printer resources often have a depleting environmental impact. For example, a substantial portion of the trees harvested to make paper are not replaced, reducing forest acreage and perhaps ecosystem health. Additionally, ink, toner, and the electric power used to operate the printer may have an environmental impact that depletes the ecosystem. Some organizations alleviate the environmental impact by implementing one or more ‘Reduce-Reuse-Recycle’ programs. For example, billing internal departments for the number of pages printed by that department, or setting quotas, may encourage employees to reduce the number of pages they print. Newly emerging print management systems (PMS) can automatically track paper and toner usage for a fleet of printers linked to the PMS via API (Application Programming Interface). The PMS systems are designed to support internal billing and inventory control within a supply loop for the printer resource, and may be used to reduce resource consumption. However, reducing paper usage does not restore the environmental depletion that may have been caused by operating the printer.
In response to the above, other organizations attempt to ‘Restore’ the environment in proportion to the amount of the resources consumed, going beyond ‘Reduce-Reuse-Recycle’. For example, a business may collect receipts for the paper they've used, calculate a standard tree equivalent (STE) by scaling the amount of paper used, and then fund a reforestation project which will plant an STE amount of trees on its behalf. However, setting up a restorative program like this may be time consuming and piecemeal to implement, requiring manual data collection, an oversimplified calculation of STE, and hand-selecting a reforestation project having non-standard or unreliable certification. For example, the most common public domain formula for calculating the ‘paper:tree’ ratio equates 8,333 sheets of paper (8.5×11, 20 lb standard letter paper) to 1 tree (40 feet×7 inch diameter). Yet, a 131 foot Red Cedar tree made into newsprint through a ‘groundwood’ process will have a different scaling factor than a faster maturing 40 foot softwood tree made into office paper through a ‘freesheet’ process. Therefore, using a default STE scaling factor may result in a several-fold inaccuracy in predicting how much of an environmental offset to plant in a reforestation project.
Another solution to offsetting environmental depletion is offered by online calculators, such as http://turnpaperintotrees.com/. The user enters an amount of paper and the online calculator calculates an equivalent number of trees, which may be easier than using a manual calculator or spreadsheet. However, the online calculators may make assumptions about the paper type and weight, the species of tree, a survival rate of the trees planted on behalf of the paper user, or other parameters, resulting in an inaccurate environmental offset. Additional to the step of calculation, the user must still manually collect the consumption data and locate a reforestation project. Reforestation projects can be found online as well, and often present specifications and photographs about the project to a potential customer. However, the customer may be an employee new to reforestation and not have the time or experience to educate themselves enough to wisely choose one project over another. Unfortunately, online tools that calculate STE using average assumptions may be inaccurate. Further, selecting reforestation projects online without the help of associated educational information may lead to choosing projects that do not meet the customer green objectives.